


Cash, Connect, or Call

by LilacSolanum



Series: The Aftermath [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Body Horror, Drug Use, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25716988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacSolanum/pseuds/LilacSolanum
Summary: I thought I understood traffic. I have many fond memories of traffic. Playing my Game Boy in traffic. Playing my Game Boy Pocket in traffic. Playing my Game Boy Advance in traffic. But Los Angeles is to traffic what Redbull is to sparkling water. It’s way more aggressive, tastes like battery acid, and not recommended for those with heart problems.After the war, Marco became an actor. A real actor, hiding from paparazzi and also calling the paparazzi to let them know he'll be at Musso & Frank Grill and would like some photos, please. Lights, camera, action. This is a Hollywood story.
Series: The Aftermath [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992349
Comments: 20
Kudos: 68
Collections: Animorphs Mini Bang 2020





	Cash, Connect, or Call

**Author's Note:**

> There are additional tags in the end notes. I will let you know right away none involve sexual misconduct.
> 
> Thank you [Cedar](https://heartstitch.tumblr.com/) for being my art partner in the [Animorphs Mini Bang 2020!](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/AnimorphsMiniBang2020) Thank you to me for running Animorphs Mini Bang 2020. Check out the collection for more fics! Thank you to [Cavatica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavatica) for the beta and also for illustrating a particular important and emotional moment.

  
  


Yes, this is someone's backyard, Los Angeles, California. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning. I’m floating face down in a backyard pool of some L.A. McMansion, naked, my shit-covered clothes floating a few feet away.

Let me explain.

By [Cedar](https://heartstitch.tumblr.com/)

I’ve been a predator, seeking shadows. I’ve been prey, running from those same shadows. And let me tell you, there is no instinct stronger than being a human who has to puke. 

Normally, I morph off booze 4 AM. 4 AM is a real good time to stop the party. It’s still late night, but the sun isn’t rising yet, and you can still get a nap in before the next day starts. You prove you’re a cool kid, you morph away the poison, and you try not to think too hard about how and where you lost your shirt. But I only have so much control over Drunk Marco. He’s my bud, sure, but sometimes he decides 4 AM isn’t enough time. Or he passes out before my personal Cinderella hour. That happens. Either way, judging by the urgent needs of my body, I had reached 4 AM, acknowledged 4 AM, and continued to enjoy myself. Thus, I had created the dreaded Hangover Marco. 

Can I morph him away? Sure. Is morphing kind of like running a marathon while giving both Olsen twins a piggyback ride? Yep. Would you want to do any of that when hungover? It’s not fun.

I turned on the faucet to wash away the evidence, and then I focused on a morph. Human is the easiest to do in my delicate condition, and I have a few different creations in my repertoire. People think it’s fun to be acquired, and I need as many disguises as I can get. I’d never morph just some guy’s straight up DNA, but Ax taught me about the whole _frolis maneuver_ thing, so I’ve got some blended up human Voltrons swimming around in my blood. My go-to hangover morph was the bastard son of about five people whom I called Mario. He was roughly my body type and size, but he had a mustache. 

I heard a voice say, “Whoa.”

I jumped and spun around, tense enough to ball my fists, but not exactly losing my cool. If anyone is in my room after a blackout, they were probably someone I was hanging out with the night before, not some morph capable terrorist who decided to nap in my bed until I woke up. Still, when you’re naked, you’ve got to be ready for anything.

Surprise, surprise, the other person was just a regular guy. He happened to be also naked, except for his shirt, which I interpreted as an homage to Winnie the Pooh. A man of taste! He’d watched the whole morphing show, for better or for worse. I winked at him. “Contour and moisturizer. It’s completely natural. Hollywood celebrities, how do they do it?”

He laughed, and memories of last night started to come to me. Not entirely, of course. There're a lot of nights in my life where I wouldn’t know the entirety of what happened until I reach those pearly white gates and Saint Peter shows me a slideshow of all my sins.

“Well, you look good,” said the guy. Bill, that was his name. 

“Puking and everything? Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, I thought it was weird that that happened to you, because until today I thought people only threw up when they prayed at church too hard,” he said with a cute little grin. He was tall, heavyset, soft all over. Soulful brown eyes and a mop of dark brown hair. Not really my type, but of course, I don’t really have a type. Why bother with types? Variety is the spice of life

Alright, well. Maybe the tall part.

“Good one,” I said. “I’m also pretty sorry you saw my nose get sucked into my face.”

Bill shivered. “I handled it alright. Thankfully, I’d already gotten up a few hours earlier to pray at church.”

I laughed and rolled out my shoulders, gearing up for the demorph. “Funny. You’re funny. Bill Shields, right? Bartender, likes sassing the people tipping him?”

“That’s exactly what it says on my birth certificate, how did you know?” He gave me that grin again, flirty and adorable.

“I had a hunch! Glad to, uh, have made your acquaintance. I think.”

He laughed. There’d been a lot of laughing. Sometimes, you wake up with someone you barely remember, and they’re shy in the morning, or boring, or somehow hungover-horny. This guy was just cool. Easy. Friendly. “We made valiant attempts at acquaintanceship, but try as we might, neither of us could, uh, acquaintance, so we just watched infomercials and passed out.”

“I know how to treat a guy,” I said. I held up a finger, letting him know I’d be a moment, and I morphed behind a shut door. When I was done, Marco reborn, I went to the bed and flopped down on my back, folding my hands behind my head. I watched as he moved slowly around the room, feeling shitty but trying to hide it. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I have a live-in chef, because I’m very rich.”

“Wait, really? You just have a guy who lives in your house to make you breakfast?”

“I call him Bam! He trained in New York and Paris, worked under Gordan Ramsey for a while, and specializes in molecular gastronomy. Anyway, I’m feeling Oscar Meyer sausage and orange juice. How about you?”

“Uh. Think he can make toad-in-the-hole?”

“Hell yeah he can,” I said.

A smile appeared on his face, slow moving and thoughtful, the sort of smile that said Bill was holding this memory in his heart. I liked giving good memories. I’m a kid who went from upper class in a two-parent household, to poor as shit, to upper-middle class but too worried about an alien invasion to enjoy the granite counter tops. I knew the value of a good memory. Maybe I’d keep this one, too.

Maybe.

—-

After we demanded demeaning meals from Bam!, I had my PA bring Tylenol and Gatorade—and a briefcase, which she set on my bedside table without a word. I told Bill not to worry about it. While he recovered from his hangover analog-style, we watched some shitty cable movie and livened it up Mystery Science Theater style. Once Bill’s corpse was decidedly revived, he went ahead and acquainted me, and let me tell you, it was worth the wait. All in all, a pretty good morning.

We lay in my California king bed, not exactly snuggling—who do you think I am, Jake? But we were touching, his arm beneath my neck. We found some classic daytime reruns, and merrily dozed to the dulcet tones of 1950s sexism. My phone lit up with a text from my PA, reminding me I had a meeting in an hour. I sighed and turned to Bill. He looked back at me with his lazy, slow smile. He was so cute.

“Alright. This was a charming lazy Monday, but let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “Cash, connect, or call?”

He blinked, his smile giving away to worry. “What?” he asked.

“It’s this thing. So. You’re aware that you’re a guy, right?”

“Generally, yeah,” he said.

“And I’m a guy,” I said. “And that’s a problem.”

“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “I’m aware of that, too.”

I reached over and unlocked Chekhov’s briefcase. It sprang open immediately. It felt pretty snappy and professional, even though I was wearing Batman boxers (you’re never too famous for Batman boxers). “You seem like a great guy. I mean that. I totally trust you. But I can’t trust TMZ to make an offer you can’t refuse, you know?”

“What are you—” started Bill, but I held up a hand. 

“Hey, I get it. People need things. What I need is for you to sign one of these,” I said, and brandished what was essentially a packet. It was hot off the printer, smelling of ink, still a little warm. I thrust it at Bill.

He took it slowly. “What is all this?” he asked.

“A little thing called an NDA,” I said. “Non-disclosure agreement. A good one. Ironclad. You sign this and spill the beans, and I can take you for all you’re worth. And let me tell you something, Mr. Shields,” I said, and stood up straight. I pulled up War Marco, a kid I’ve tried best to bury, but the whole intimidating eye contact thing worked wonders when I needed it. Even in Batman boxers (you’re never too heroic for Batman boxers). “I will. You get that, right? No hesitation. Hope you like your mom’s basement, ‘cause you’ll be living there the rest of your life.”

Bill had the kindness to look betrayed, like he was genuinely offended I thought he was capable of selling me out. I liked that about him. I dropped the Animorph act, and grinned.

“But!” I said, gesturing dramatically. “I don’t ask this without incentive. So you get three choices. Behind door number one is a check for ten thousand dollars.” 

Smash cut to: greed in Bill’s eyes. One moment, he was horrified at my implications. The next, there were dollar signs. There we go. 

They were always so shocked by the amount. Thankfully, they never realized they could get, at minimum, five times as much for an interview with the right paparazzi magazine. At least, not until they got out the door and thought about it. 

“That’s right. Ten thousand George Washingtons for a John Hancock, no strings attached, no questions asked. Now!” I said, holding up a finger like I was explaining rules in a game show. Cash isn’t the most valuable thing in the world, and it’s a one time deal. The guys in L.A. sometimes prefer a connection, an in with an agent or an audition with someone who owes me a favor. I’m pretty sure you’re not a born and raised Angelino, you’ve got this wholesome midwest vibe. Did you come to L.A. to be a bartender?”

“You got me,” he said, like he was admitting some secret. “I do stand-up.”

“I thought so! And call?” I winked. “That means you get my number. The real one, the one that goes straight to my personal palm pilot. I’m cute, famous, and oh so very rich. So whaddya say? Cash, connect, or call?”

He brought his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “I—wow. Uh. Processing a lot of things right now.”

“Take your time,” I said lightly. “You’re a great guy. Happy to do it.”

This is why I try not to take home regular, non-famous men. Celebs get it. It becomes a mutually assured destruction thing. Much easier. Regular guys get expensive. Not for the first time, I thought about how the girls rarely get to have this conversation. Unless they saw me do something I shouldn’t, it’s just wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Out the door with nothing but cab fare and a smile on her face. It’s kind of sexist when you think about it.

Bill exhaled slowly. “Ten thousand dollars? For real? That’s a huge chunk of my student loans. Not that I have a lot. I, of course, dropped out after two years, as is tradition for a comedian.” 

“Time-honored,” I repeated gravely. 

He bit his lip. “Hey, just—wow. I mean—I’m busy, I’m figuring myself out, if I had your number I wouldn’t even—ten thousand dollars? As in five figures? To sign this thing?”

“Yep. And that means you tell no one. No one. Not your best friend, not some random stranger, not even your mommy. Nothing. Zip. Nada. You take this to your grave. Anyone asks, you spent all morning jerking off in your apartment.”

“That’s a very plausible alibi.”

“Don’t I know it. Sign the thing, get money, you have a sexy secret and America gets to keep thinking I’m all apple pies and heterosexuality.”

He gave me a wide-eyed, surprised-bird look. It reminded me of Tobias. I bet he’d be jealous of my Batman boxers (you’re never too deep in your own wildlife instincts for tiny bird Batman boxers). “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious.”

He ran his hands down his face. “This feels so weird. I—look, I’m either at the bar or the clubs. Even though you’re—you’re Marco. You’re Marco! My dad was infested, you know.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“It sucked. But—”

“It’s okay,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “C’mon. My schedule is packed. No one ever picks call.”

—

I know it’s a controversial opinion, but I’m a bold kind of guy, so I’ll say it: L.A. traffic sucks.

I thought I understood traffic. I have many fond memories of traffic. Playing my Game Boy in traffic. Playing my Game Boy Pocket in traffic. Playing my Game Boy Advance in traffic. But Los Angeles is to traffic what Redbull is to sparkling water. It’s way more aggressive, tastes like battery acid, and not recommended for those with heart problems.

I pushed my head back against the seat of my Bugatti Veyron, slinking down. This was rough. What was the hold up this time? Another accident? Was every person in L.A. slowing down to view the horror, the terror, the utter carnage of a car that was dented, surrounded by a few people looking annoyed? I had a meeting with some allegedly important director who I couldn’t care less about, but either way, it was a meeting I had to get to.

Suddenly, there was a memory of taxxon flesh ripping beneath a gorilla's sharp nails. I heard the sound of bones breaking, dull and meaty. I felt a hork-bajir gouging me with blades never meant for violence.

Let me show you real excitement, Los Angeles. I’ve seen actual carnage. You can use it to fuel the Scarface monologue in your fifth overpriced acting class. Won’t you be lucky?

I moved my car forward about a half-inch, just to feel alive. The freeway was moving so slowly, we could have all jumped out of our cars, performed an entire musical number, and still have had another twenty minutes to get back into our cars.

I flipped the radio from NPR to top 40. Eminem burst into life, mid-rap. Surprisingly nice guy. Awkward, actually. I flipped back to NPR, then back to rock, then back to NPR. Nothing felt right. Nothing was settled.

Eventually, I stumbled across a station playing Don’t You (Forget About Me). Gotta love The Breakfast Club. I added my own vocal flavor on top of Simple Mind, which involved shouting louder when the notes got higher. I didn’t really know the lyrics, but I also didn’t care. The roof was down, the weather was lovely. Let them see _the_ Marco having a good fucking day. The beat was pouring energy into my chest. I wasn’t going to let this traffic get me down.

My eyes fell on a pigeon messing with an empty bag of chips on the highway shoulder. It had the classic green head that faded into a fashionable purple and stripes on its wings. There were three stripes instead of the normal two, which looked cool. I’ve always thought pigeons were way too pretty to be so gross. Mice? Ugly. Rats? Hideous. Pigeons? The Heidi Klum of the pest world.

I tried to remember if I’d been a pigeon. Seagull, yeah. Maybe not pigeon. Once I told some andalite bigwig I had no idea how many animals I had acquired, and he almost shit himself through his feet.

Whether I’d been one or not, I felt like I had a pretty good idea what it was thinking. Hell yeah. Chips. No thoughts about suffocating in the bag, or that half the cars in L.A. had “Keep It Green” bumper stickers but somehow Angelinos couldn’t manage to throw away their own garbage. Just an empty head full of salt.

“Lucky bastard,” I muttered.

I swear to god, the pigeon looked at me.

—

An hour and three miles later, I was on the set of my TV show. _Herald of Arms_ is my pride and joy because here’s the thing—it’s good. It’s really, really good.

I started messing around with acting two years ago when the whole “Marco of the Animorphs” thing wasn’t pulling in gigs like it used to. Fame is fickle, even when you’re famous for, you know, saving all of humanity. The talk show circuit was running dry. Politics moved past the andalites and back to local bickering, so no one wanted my commentary. Every book and movie about the Animorphs experience had been made, then made again. So, I needed a new job. I decided to get serious about the acting thing. It’s lying, but you get paid for it. Sounds perfect!

The only problem was that I was only getting auditions for comedies, both romantic and buddy. That’s great, but I wanted a role a little more interesting than Katherine Heigel’s work husband who wore tight pants and gave sassy love advice. 

I grew up watching shitty sci-fi—and also living sci-fi—so I figured I could whip together a sci-fi show of my own. Then I asked myself: what if it wasn’t shitty? I mean, Babylon 5 had all that boring philosophical stuff. I could do that, too.

A year of talent scouting and cutting through executive tape later, we had done the thing. It took off. The show was rolling in the prestige, and we were getting interest from all kinds of A-listers. Michael Crichton wrote an episode. _Michael Chrichton._

That’s why I had a meeting with Teddy Dreyer, an up-and-coming director darling. He’d done a short on some Tarantino-helmed omnibus, and critics were all jerking off about it. I’d never seen any of his stuff, but our showrunner was pumped. Our showrunner also wears a lot of board shorts. 

Oh, and Teddy Dreyer happened to be the president of UPN’s son. You know, the network our show is on! We didn’t really have a choice in hiring him.

The guy asked to see me personally. I figured it was a whole fan thing. He’d thank me for my service, I’d say it was my duty, then we’d shake hands and both be on our way. I just hope he doesn’t cry.

A woman sat outside the director’s trailer on a fold out chair, messing around with her palm pilot in a way that read boredom, not work. Judging from her business casual attire and frown, I pegged her as a personal assistant rather than some girlfriend-groupie-fuckbuddy. Weird to make her sit out in the hot sun, rather than on set, still close by but wrapped in the sweet embrace of A/C. I’d never treat my Number One like this, even if he was my seventh-favorite Number One, and I’ve had eight.

I also didn’t need to perform power plays with my staff in order to make myself feel very important but hey, who’s counting.

“Working hard, or hardly working?” I asked, putting on a corny voice and pairing it with full body finger guns and the cheesiest wink I could muster.

She looked surprised, then laughed. “Just on call,” she said. 

She was cute. Stylish, too. Her black hair was a burst of spiral curls and fashioned into a high puff, her lipstick was cherry red, and her dress was a bright pink gingham that popped against her dark brown skin. She wasn’t the first L.A. girl to do the modern-but-vintage thing, but it was still a welcome break from all the wannabe Betty Cooper assistants named Ashleigh.

“Love the dress,” I said, and dipped into the trailer.

Sometimes I think America won’t actually be all that shocked when I come out.

As soon as I stepped in, I was engulfed in a cloud of weed. Call me old-fashioned, but when I’m getting blitzed out of my mind, I prefer a bit of subtlety. 

Teddy was seated at a desk with his hands folded in front of him. When the door closed behind me, he leaned back, moved his hands flat against the table, and he _examined_ me. You know, eyes going up and down, smirking, making a show of judgement. When he felt like he’d made his point, he leaned forward and spoke with a comical amount of gravity.

“You never _really_ morph on camera,” he said.

I hadn’t expected this bullshit, but this wasn’t my first time with some overblown “creative” who got by on mediocrity and nepotism. They always think they can do something new with my morphing. So I amused, I deflected, I distracted, and by the end of our time together the wannabe-auteur didn’t even realize I’d rejected all their ideas and despised them as a person. 

I snapped my fingers like I’d be found out. “Darn!” I said. “I knew they’d catch on eventually! The guys at Industrial Light And Magic really do amazing work.” I pulled a chair out of his table and sat on it with my ankle over my knee, man spreading all the way across the country, displaying my power and reach like so many animals I’ve been. “How’d’ya know?”

The guy barely reacted to me. He had imagined some script in his head, and he was playing it out regardless of what I’d say. “I want to see it. _All_ of it,” he said, with the same breathless energy as Kate Winslet begging Leonard DiCaprio to draw her like one of his French girls.

I shrugged. “I’m open to a private show, but not right now. I can’t morph away loose clothes,” I said, pulling on my flattering but not skin-tight Givenchy t-shirt. “Unless you want a different kind of private show.” I winked at him, as exaggerated as I could make it. 

Teddy Dreyer’s face twisted up in disgust. “C’mon, man,” he said. “I’m talking about on camera!”

“I’ve morphed on camera plenty of times,” I said. “Are you not familiar with my dazzling oeuvre? Beast Boy in _The Teen Titans_ Movie? You know, the one that tanked? Did you not see ABC’s made for TV movie _The Princess And The Frog_ ? I was the Frog. Fun fact, I was also Bruiser in _Legally Blonde_! That was a favor to Reese.”

“Nah, nah, nah, nah,” he said, waving his hand, not even smiling at the list of my worst credits (and _Legally Blonde_.) “You morph and then they cut it all up. I want to see you do it. One shot. Wide, but not too wide.”

I suppressed a sigh. I uncrossed my legs and sat up straight, keeping my tone light but using my body language to drive home that I was being serious. “I know sometimes Cassie does all this cool stuff on camera, but I can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried, but she just had to hog all the talent.” People love it when we push the bickering siblings angle, even if I haven’t spoken to Cassie for maybe a year and a half. At least, she hasn’t returned my calls.

“I’m a big fan of yours, you know,” he said, which was interesting, because he was treating me like some drooling lackey who was thrilled to be in his presence. Sometimes I regret saving the world. “You talk a lot about how little control you have over your morphing, and that you, in particular, morph the weirdest.” 

Pretty cool of him to be so blunt about a shortcoming. Just because _I_ say it doesn’t mean _you_ can say it. I laughed it off. “It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.”

“That’s the thing of it, right? Morphing’s disturbing! You did all those sequences in _The Animorphs Movie_ , and some of those sequences touch brilliance. Your cuticles bleeding when your nails turned to claws? That dug into my brain. That’s art, man.”

I really wanted to punch this guy. “Yeah, that’s about as disturbing as the _movie_ got. There was a lot left on the cutting room floor, stuff that would never fly on primetime TV. We’ve got cast members who refuse to be in scenes with me morphing,” I said. “Half the staff leaves the set. The ones that stick around have to sign waivers. We scrub it all clean for the normies, right?” He nodded over and over as I spoke, like he was listening to his favorite song.

“I hear that, I hear that. But it’s gonna be epic.”

“It takes up to five minutes,” I said. I was now talking to him the way I talk to politicians in private meetings, stern and condescending. I was getting too annoyed to keep up the act. “That’s not good television.”

“Not with the right score,” he said. “I’m telling you, man. It’s gonna be great.”

I balled my fists at my sides, but kept the rest of me relaxed. “Hey, we can try it,” I said, as if we were just going to try out a yoga class and not waste production time, leak money, and ultimately make staff stick around on set and not go home to their families. This was a bad idea, and I was trying to tell him it was a bad idea, but he was so far up his own ass he couldn’t listen. So I guess we’d do it, all to keep the peace, because his powerful dad could sabotage the show if we didn’t make his kid happy.

My breath was coming out quick, and my mouth was closed in a thin line. I had been having such a damn good day, and now this guy was ruining it. It magnified my irritation. 

I could practically smell the gorilla next to me, musk and earth. I could feel him vibrating with battle lust, fists clenched, skin stretched over teeth. He wanted to see the reality of morphing? I could show him. I could display all the ugliness, the sounds of grinding bone, the sight of muscles exposed and writhing as they changed. And then, after that, I could slam his head against this table, over and over and over.

I visibly flinched, the shock of my thoughts like a stab in my gut. Thankfully, Teddy was too stoned to notice.

I made myself relax. This wasn’t my first rodeo with what the shrinks call “violent ideation.” It’s a whole child soldier thing. It’s not like I was going to do it. Attacking people isn’t really my brand of breakdown.

I slapped a smile on my face. “Thing is, you only get two shots. That’s it.” Teddy started nodding to some invisible beat again. I leaned forward, really getting in his face. “Rearranging your whole body is a real workout, but it’s a more of a high-intensity interval training kind of thing. I can do it a few times, but it gets dangerous if I keep going. You feel me?” I actually meant that. I’d tried morphing three times in a row earlier in my career. I had to take the rest of the day off.

Surprisingly, Teddy seemed to understand. I’d spoken his language, Personal-Trainer-ese. 

“You got a deal,” said the asshole.

—

I went to set and filmed a quick little scene. Not a lot of Nick Lang today, which was fine. That was one of the reasons I didn’t want the starring role. It meant more “me” time with which to schedule more work. As I left, I saw Teddy’s hot assistant standing in the parking lot, Teddy-less. I pivoted toward her.

“Hey!” I called. She jumped a little and looked at me with something between surprise and suspicion.

“Hello,” she said with a guarded smile. “What’s up?”

“Is your boss anywhere nearby?”

“Dreyer’s in a meeting, but he should be out soon,” she said, even though the middle of a parking lot was nowhere near any kind of decent meeting place. I’d bet money that he was sitting in the very BMW that his assistant was standing in front of, getting stoned behind tinted windows. Good money. Millions. I could lose about four without noticing it, honestly.

I put a hand on a nearby safety bollard and leaned on it. “Have you ever been flipping through the channels, landed on my face, and thought gee! It’s global hero Marco! My dream is to one day talk shit about my boss with that guy. Well, it’s your lucky day, because I’m Marco, and I want to talk shit about your boss.”

The girl gave me a tight-lipped, wide-eyed face that meant “Yup, that guy’s a yikes!” She jerked her head to the right, indicating we should move away from the car. We took a little stroll. “So your meeting went well,” she drawled with sarcastic cheer.

“Charming man, and by charming I mean revolting, and by man I mean a personified protein shake with dick insecurity,” I said.

She barked a surprised and scandalized laugh. I took an exaggerated step closer to her, still giving her plenty of space. “Question. Are you in the mood to be hit on? I’d like to hit on you. I won’t take it personally if you’re not. We can keep ripping into Teddy, or I can be about my merry way. Lady’s choice.”

She tilted her head and considered me. I gave her an exaggerated shy guy act, clasping my hands behind my back, biting my lip, and shuffling a foot. She shook her head at me, then took a coy step forward. “Well, I’m Dottie Arnez, and I’m okay with you hitting on me. Play your cards right, and I might even hit on you in return.”

“I like that. Very romantic comedy, very meet-cute. You like romantic comedies?”

“I actually do,” she said. “Kind of a guilty pleasure.” 

“So, this is normally the point where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere do something adorably spontaneous. Whaddya say? Sushi tonight?”

“Tonight?” asked Dottie. “Like, tonight-tonight?”

“Sure. Why not? If we’re doing the whole inciting-incident-romantic-comedy thing, we gotta do it tonight. That, or bicker about our opposing passions, then discover our mutual friends just happened to set us up on a blind date in a restaurant that is not so subtly sponsoring our storyline.”

She studied me for a minute, and I batted my eyelashes at her like a Looney Tunes character. She laughed and shrugged. “Fine. Six o’clock?”

“Perfect.”

“Where are we eating sushi?” she asked, somewhat warily. She was probably expecting me to bring her somewhere high class and ask her to wear a fancy dress. I waved my hand dismissively.

“There’s a little place I like, family owned, always fresh, always delicious. Give me your address, I’ll pick you up.”

She recited her address, still suspicious. I wrote it down in my palm pilot, turned to leave, then snapped my fingers and spun back around. “I forgot to mention something. This place is in Hawaii.”

And there was the other shoe she’d been waiting for. “What!” she said.

“Hawaii.”

“Hawaii?” 

“I’m going to turn into a pelican and carry you in my mouth. Just kidding, we’ll take an airplane.”

“Airplane!”

“Yeah. Bet you thought I was going to say a private jet. Nah, I keep it humble when I fly across the ocean on a whim.”

“I have work tomorrow!”

“Call in sick.”

“Ohhh, no. No, no, no. I just started, Teddy’d definitely fire me. I need this job.”

“Don’t worry! I do this a lot. I’ve got the whole spontaneous Hawaii trip down to a science. Seriously, this sushi is worth it. You’ll be back in L.A. by 6:00 AM, tired, but with plenty of time to get Mr. Dreyer his morning lines of coke.” She still looked unsure, so I leaned further over the counter. “C’mon. My friend bet me $1,000 that I couldn’t convince a girl to go to Hawaii with me. We’ll go, we’ll dance, and you can drink a ton of Cuban milkshakes and sing a song about being a bell.”

“That’s the plot of Guys And Dolls.”

“People tell me I look just like Marlon Brando.”

She laughed softly, halfway to a sigh. Then she threw her hands up in the air. “Okay, screw it. Screw it! I’m going to Hawaii for a night with Marco.”

The one-night Hawaii thing _always_ works.

I held up a hand for a high five, which she happily gave after an affectionate eye roll. “We’re leaving now. I’ll call the taxi,” I said.

—

Have you ever been to Honolulu? You should go to Honolulu. Sure, even a low-cost trip costs thousands of dollars, more than my dad used to make in three months, but it’s great. White beaches, blue water, and an unspoken contest to wear the least amount of fabric. It looked exactly like it did in pictures. Hollywood Boulevard? Dingy. New York? Disgusting. Honolulu? As advertised, all sunsets and smiling faces.

We rode first class, of course, which Dottie had never experienced. Watching someone enjoy leg room for the first time is a real treat. She kept kicking her feet, bright-eyed and happy. It was cute, and almost catching. 

Always nice to see luxury filtered through someone who wasn’t used to it. 

I grabbed a hotel room for a quick post-travel nap. It was a whole suite with two bedrooms for him and her, five stars with an ocean view. Dottie ran around for about fifteen minutes after we checked in, touching everything, marveling at the quality and visuals. Me? 

I’m over hotels, even the nice ones. When I was a kid fighting against impossible odds, I’d find myself occasionally facing death. I always thought of my mother in those moments, and held the memories close. Now, if my life were to flash before my eyes, it’d just be various hotel rooms. Squishy beds, giant TVs, tasteful art, first floor spas, rooftop bars, but in the end the only good thing was the porn. Rosebud was the name of his tenga egg.

(by [Cavatica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavatica), for some reason)

After we re-energized, we went to Ikiru, the little sushi restaurant I’d talked up. It was humble, I hadn’t been lying about that. The restaurant boasted old chairs with tape on torn cushions, lamented menus with frayed corners, and cheesy photos next to the food descriptions. Classic.

We ordered, and Chef Hayakawa treated us right, spoiling us with experimental dishes. Whenever he visited the table, he gave me shit like we were old pals. Dottie loved it. Hayakawa’s basically my wingman.

Dottie started to get a little nervous about catching our flight, but I reassured her we’d have plenty of time to enjoy a gorgeous Honolulu sunset and still return by L.A. morning. We went back to the hotel, which had a great cabana area with tons of outdoor fireplaces surrounding an infinity pool.

We found a spot facing the ocean, and watched the sky paint lazy streaks of pink and orange over palm trees and the gentle ocean tide. Hawaii is just god showing off. The midwest is where god hid all his mistakes.

I leaned back and stretched my arms over the back of our booth. She looked at me, and I raised my eyebrows. She laughed, rolled her eyes, and curled into me, resting her head against my chest. I placed my chin on the top of her head and smiled down at her. Weren’t we cute? Very teen romance, very Hallmark card.

I started to slowly stroke the back of her neck, and spoke quietly into her hair. “We have a few hours left. We can explore the island more,” I said. “Lots of nightlife.”

She hummed and snuggled closer.

“We could retire to the hotel room,” I said, voice low and inviting. “Maybe watch some TV. Maybe nap again. Maybe fuck.”

She laughed and pulled away. “Oh?” she asked with a smirk.

“Just saying. My dick’s on the table. You can say no, and I’ll do nothing about it but respect your integrity, promise,” I said. “I’m not that guy.”

She gave me a sultry look, all eyelashes and smirk. “How far away is the table?”

“There’s an average amount of space between me and the table. But if you haven’t noticed,” I swept my arm around and indicated the scene, “I’m a giver.”

Dottie was clearly intrigued by the implication. We gazed into each other’s eyes for a moment, all soft rock music video. I kissed her, and she returned in kind. She took her time with it, slow, easy, pulling slightly at my bottom lip.

“Thankfully, I got rid of my integrity before I moved to L.A.,” she said.

I kissed her again. “You’re going to be fun, aren’t you,” I said, smiling against her lips. I ran a hand down her back, bringing my fingers just up beneath her shirt, not feeling her up, but letting her know I’d be real good at it.

She ran a hand through my hair, sending shivers through my body. Jackpot, Dottie Arnez, you’ve found Marco’s second favorite place to be touched. “Fuck,” I said breathlessly. I stood up and grabbed her hand so we could get somewhere private and she could touch my first favorite spot. “Let’s go to the room. Let’s go there very fast.”

She turned toward the hotel, tugging at my hand. I took one last look at the ocean. The sky was now dark blue, the tipping point before nightfall—

And suddenly I could feel seaweed beneath my bare feet on a Pacific Ocean island no human had ever touched before, wet sand against the palm of my hand, freezing cold wind attacking my wet spandex morphing suit.

I saw my own dolphin body floating away from me, blood blooming in the water.

I heard myself screaming.

Dottie tugged at my hand again. “Marco?”

“Hey, idea,” I said, dropping our handhold and gesturing grandly while my own lungs tried to choke me. “Shots first?”

She studied me. “Is everything alright?”

“Yep! Just. You know. I like shots,” I said. “C’mon. Bar’s over there.” I turned to leave without her.

She followed, of course. I ordered tequila, and we did the whole damn thing, salt and lime at the end.

When I tilted my head back down, I saw a group of pigeons hanging out at a table like teens at a diner. Three out of five had shimmering green heads, just like the three striped pigeon I saw earlier. They were far away, but I was pretty sure I could see a stripe on one. Wasn’t that supposed to be rare?

“Idea. Another shot?” I said.

  
  


I woke up in a new hotel room. It was just as cookie-cutter as the one I’d gotten after I landed, another masterpiece by some “twenty nine for the fifth time!” year-old named Dawn, but still new. 

The only difference between this place and everywhere else I’ve stayed was it was absolutely trashed. 

I sat up slowly, surveying the damage. Memories were coming to me in pieces, and I followed them like Hansel and Gretel with a trail of candy. I remembered there had been two guys on a business trip at the bar back at the cabana, and that they had struck up a conversation with me. They bought me drinks, I bought them drinks, and eventually we were shouting lines from _The Jerk_ at each other until security asked us to quiet down or leave. So we left and ended up in the VIP section of some club, cheerfully rolling on E that had somehow been acquired, talking one thousand miles a minute.

When the clubs closed, we convinced the bartender to sell us bottles to-go for three times the already bloated price, and he was more than happy to take our under-the-table money. The boys—what the hell were their names, they were something generic, whatever, I’ll call them RyanKevin and ChrisBlake—had called a limo, and we drank straight Jack while the driver looked the other way. We ended up at this hotel, where we: 

Broke a lamp!

Spilled the contents of our dear friend Jack on the television! 

Ordered a pizza, and dropped most of it on a cream colored rug! 

Broke the coffee maker!

Bunched up the duvet in the corner of the room. and I sure as hell wasn’t going to figure out why!

Raided the mini bar!

Broke the door to the mini bar!

We had fun, apparently. A whole lot of fun.

I pulled my hands down my face. 

It may be time to get another sober coach. Look, I’m not an idiot. I make a lot of money, have a lot of power. I’ve seen _Behind The Music_ , I get it, I know how these stories tend to end. 

It’s not like I have a problem—can’t have a problem, what with all the morphing—but still, when I sense it’s time to pull back, I hire some depressing Vietnam vet to follow me around and guilt me into stopping at drink number three. Nothing kills your buzz like a guy with a scar over his lip judging you. Take it easy tonight, Marco, make ol’ Don and his permanent limp proud of you. Sure, I’d served too, but afterward, I got millions of dollars and my body was completely spotless. The least I could do is give a vet heaps of money to babysit me. 

RyanKevin and ChrisBlake had left around seven in the damn morning, which was really impressive for two people who couldn’t morph away their shame. I laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling as I got rid of my hangover, morphing into someone I called Margo, taller than me with gorgeous tits. I put my hands on them, just for a moment, a litmus test of my mood. Grabbing my own boobs did nothing for my libido. Something was wrong.

I suddenly sat up in the bed, ta-tas flying, and I shouted, “Dottie!”

Shit.

—

I got business out of the way first, calling my PR agent and crooning the traditional, “Luuucy! I got some ‘splainin’ to do!” I rushed out of the hotel without formally checking out, because the damage was done anyway, and Lucy would take care of it. 

When I got back to the first hotel, Dottie was sitting in the lobby, a box of tissues by her side, staring intently at her palm pilot with red eyes. 

I hadn’t thought to get her number. We weren’t supposed to get separated. I sat next to her, and she gave me a look that could kill a man, and pretty much did. I felt bad. I felt really, really bad.

“I am so fucking sorry,” I said.

“Teddy fired me.”

“I’ll fix it,” I said. I reached over to touch her knee, and she jerked away. I took my hand back. I ran my palms down my face, and held them there for a moment, pressing my fingers to my eyes. I took a deep breath.

I looked up and smiled brightly. “So!” I said. “Cash, connect, or call?”

—

Two days later, I’m out a few favors—big ones—but Dottie has a contract with CAA and an audition for a pilot. I do what I can. I also called up Teddy Dreyer, and apologized for her. He said he totally understood, that he’d been there, and you could practically hear the eyebrow wiggling and the smirk. 

I wish I could have told him it wasn’t like that, but I couldn’t, because guess what? It was exactly like that. I had been that sleazy guy I told myself I wasn’t, luring in a girl with money and power and then treating her like shit. Yay for me. Mom would be so proud. Not my real mom, my yeerk mom. If only she could see me now. 

Dottie still wanted her job back, because she didn’t really seem to believe I’d changed her life. I understood. It’s hard to trust good news.

When I walked onto the _Herald of Arms_ set, she was there, talking on her palm pilot and ignoring me. I could respect that. There were plenty of other people ready and willing to pay attention to me. Like Mimi, my hair and make-up girl, who didn’t actually wear overdone makeup like Mimi from _The Drew Carey Show_ , but I wished she did. She’s hilarious. She did a great job of distracting me from my darker thoughts.

Today’s scene was the one that came to Teddy Dreyer in a wet dream: me, morphing, in a one-shot with no cuts. Sure. 

Mimi had watched me morph a few times, so when I told her about Teddy Dreyer’s little plan, we both made the same universal face with the raised eyebrows and the pressed lips that means “alright, well, good luck with that.”

Aside from the idiotic wide shot, it was actually an exciting scene. They were taking the Nick Lang role from wacky best friend to romantic lead, which was fun. Nick Lang’s in love with Herald herself, but Herald’s not sure if she loves him back. Classic will-they-won’t-they, lots of staring out into the distance, lots of fake crying. It took serious acting, like, Emmy-chasing level. The reviews were raving, though they all contained phrases like “Marco is surprisingly adept” and “Marco manages to rise to the challenge.” Thanks for all the faith, guys.

In this scene, Nicky-boy’s just found out that Herald’s been kidnapped, but she’s with the other guy she’s been smooching. So he puts his hands on a desk in the fancy superhero headquarters office, closes his eyes, becomes a bird and flies away to rescue the girl who spurned him. Dramatic stuff. Pretty great moment for an uninterrupted wide shot, if morphing didn’t take forever and wasn’t gross as hell.

We did the thing. Me, Nick Lang, wistful and hurt. Guy who played Herald’s mentor-slash-surrogate dad-slash-someone-get-this-guy-friends-his-own-age put his hand on my shoulder, understanding. Almost-dad walked away. Then, the morphing began.

The first thing that happened is a few people turned away, and some left the room entirely. We didnt make anyone who worked on the show watch me morph if it grossed them out. The guest stars had to sign a waiver they didn’t really understand until they saw me go, and we just hoped they’re not the gagging sort. I could see confusion on Teddy’s face when half the staff refused to watch, even if I had warned him. It felt real satisfying. I tried to tell you, buddy. Watch what happens next.

The morph actually went pretty well, which was a real blow to my pettiness. I watched feather patterns appear on my skin as I stared down at my hands. That’s always a pretty start. I started to shrink at a steady pace, nice and dramatic. I could feel the skin of my legs grow hard and coarse, and was pretty sure my calves were getting skinny while my thighs puffed out, which was funny and probably not what Teddy wanted, but it wasn’t horrifying. 

My jeans went with them, a total relief. Morphing skintight jeans was still a hit or miss for me, even after doing it for years. Nick Lang transforms with his clothes on, which involves a _very_ revealing wardrobe. Our show really did its part in balancing out the sexism in genre television. When we’re filming, I eat nothing but baked chicken thighs and blanched broccoli. Unless I get stoned out of my mind and eat three happy meals in a row. It’s about balance. Simba taught me about it.

A couple minutes and some face-melting later, I was my best movie bird, an ornate hawk-eagle that was prettier than the more functional osprey. <Ta-da!> I said in thought-speak, which I can use freely on set as the microphones can’t pick it up. I try to be mature and not use that power to torture my scene partners with my hilarious jokes. Mostly.

Teddy called cut and reset. The crew buzzed around, moving the lights and cameras back to where they were at the beginning of the scene. I flew to a space set up for me to demorph in private, a courtesy to the set. Mimi came to reapply my make-up. Teddy followed her.

“That was pretty good,” he said as Mimi stroked me with tiny brushes. “Really liked that feather effect! Think you can do it again?”

“Nope!” I said cheerfully. I knew this was coming. What he got was going to be the best take, and I was still kind of bitter it happened at all. “Morphing’s random, I told you. Again, I’m not Cassie. I need fast editing and multiple cameras on me at once. I’m disappointed in me too, but I’m working on self-acceptance.”

“Let’s just give it another go,” he said. Was he condescending? You bet! The only thing that stopped me from rolling my eyes is that Mimi was putting mascara on them.

“Oh, why not!” I said with a smile. “But remember, this is the only other take you’re getting. I can only do two.”

“I know you’ve done three in one day,” said Teddy, matching my fake-happy tone.

I pulled away from Mimi, and slowly turned to look at him. “You think so?” I asked, much less happy.

“You’ve told stories about morphing multiple times. You had a whole bit on Leno about being in Arctic.”

“That was fueled by a need to survive,” I said. I had to fight to keep the disdain out of my voice. “And it happened once every two hours, not back-to-back. Plus, my body was still pretty used to constant morphing. It’s not now.”

“You morph a lot.”

“Not as much as back then.”

Teddy looked at me dubiously, like he thought I was lying, like he thought he knew better. “We’ll see,” he said.

We all took our places, and we did the scene again. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Sad, sad, sad. Acting, acting, acting. Everything went smoothly, and then it was time for me to morph. The camera pulled back for a wide-shot. 

I looked down at my hands, just as before, all jilted and pensive. And then I began to morph.

It started with my skin again but this time, but this time, there were no feather tattoos. My skin got loose and baggy, like clothes that didn’t fit. Unsettling? Slightly. I didn’t want to look at it. I tilted my head toward the ceiling, staying in character, aiming for broody. When I shifted, I could feel my skin slip down my skull.

Normally, when something this gross started happening right away, I’d reverse the morph without waiting for the director to say cut. Most of the time, they understood, and were even thankful. I didn’t think I’d get the same reaction from Teddy.

I could feel my bones detaching from their sockets and start floating around, repositioning themselves. Some pushed my skin out as they shifted and turned, like cucumbers and carrots poking through a plastic grocery bag. I was becoming the shape of a bird with the size of a man, all while my skin stretched and bulged.

I kept looking up at the ceiling, doing my best to keep a melancholy expression while my unattached bottom lip slid further and further down my jaw. Look ma, I’m _The Scream._

Someone shouted, “Oh god!” Someone else screeched in terror. It took me a moment to realize what was happening.

My skin was sucking into my eye sockets, going in my skull like putty down a drain. 

That wasn't the worst part. You’d think I’d grown feathers beneath my skin and this was just some kind of sick, dramatic reveal, but no. The lack of skin exposed the meat of me, wet and pulsing, white sinew and yellow fat, blood held in only by the mechanics of morphing. 

As the last of my skin slurped upward, I opened my mouth to apologize, horrified. My teeth shattered and melted into my skull, and my skull reshaped itself so my entire head was a beak made of bone, curved with a too-sharp tip. My throat shrank and I only garbled a sound that was half man and half bird. 

I jerked backwards and began to merge into myself, not shrinking but folding again and again until I was small. My blood swirled and became feathers, wet at first, like a freshly hatched chick still covered in albumin.

Teddy called cut before I was done. I kept morphing, and he shouted cut again, louder, angry.

<You want me to demorph in front of everyone after all that?> I asked. <I can’t fly yet.>

Teddy made a sound in the back of his throat and turned away. I finished off the morph, demorphed, and emerged from my little closet with my arms out, a strained grin plastered on my face. “Yo, Cronenberg!” I shouted at the director of photography, who was one of the fucked up few who thought morphing was cool, which is why he had job security. “How’d you like that?”

Obviously, Cronenberg isn’t his actual name. Have you sensed a theme? Do I rename everyone because the life of a celebrity is just a revolving door of staff on your payroll and on-set talent, none of whom have any interest in you once they’ve moved on to the next bigger and brighter thing, so why bother learning anything meaningful about anyone? 

Nah. I just do it because it’s fun.

Cronenberg gave me a big thumbs-up, pleased as punch. “Eleven out of ten! Best one yet.”

“Nice,” I said, and approached Teddy. He looked furious. I shrugged. 

“I told you. Random.”

Teddy sucked at his teeth, looking me up and down like I was some bratty child star. Which, hey, kind of true depending on who you ask, but that wasn’t the point. I smiled back at him, as serene as possible. I also clasped my hands behind my back so that he couldn’t see them shaking. It happened after two consecutive morphs.

“Marco,” he said, acting the disappointed father. “Did you really have to do all that? You upset the staff.”

“It happens! I can’t control it. I told you that, like, ten times.”

Teddy glared at me. “Can you try at least one more time?”

I suppressed the eye roll, but couldn’t stop myself from sighing. “This has been a great day, because I do sure love repeating myself. So again, two’s the limit. The first one’s the best you’re going to get.”

“That one went a little too long. I know you can push yourself to give me something better.” He flashed me a perfectly phony smile, straight teeth all in a perfect row. It was a rich boy smile, carved from money and attention. He would have had braces at twelve and regular whitenings since puberty.

I hated his damn smile. He didn’t deserve that smile.

“I believe in you,” he said.

Rage swelled up in me like an explosion, starting at the center and flaring out with a bang.

I grew up real close to Santa Barbara. You know, where Oprah lives? Half our school was filled with these kids. It was a public school, sure, but it was a good public school, award winning, swimming in government money, so not all the trust fund kids went private. My parents put me in there, after all. I had been living that lifestyle, too, until it all changed overnight.

After mom died, I stopped showing up to school in new clothes, which sucked because I was growing, and everything I owned became way too tight. One time my pants ripped in gym class. Everyone laughed. A teacher gave me one of her sweaters to tie around my waist. It was way too big on me, and looked like the train of a wedding dress.

Think that’s embarrassing? Oh, the hits keep coming. Dad was too out of it to help me deal with the brand new B.O. puberty had gifted me, and eventually Jake’s mom had to buy me deodorant, a real highlight of my life. I broke down crying in the lunch room exactly once, and after that, I was constantly pulled out of classes to go talk to the school counselor—who was completely useless, by the way, and I quickly learned what to say to get her to leave me alone. I was the weird little kid whose mom had died, squeezed into too small clothes, a smelly crybaby. 

The only thing that put me higher on the social ladder than people like Tobias was making everyone laugh in class and having a very large best friend. That only took me so far. When Jake wasn’t around to protect me, it was open season on Marco, and boy did certain kids love the hunt.

Teddy’s smug little smirk reminded me of all those shitty little rich boys, pushing me against walls, toying with me just because they could. And you know what? 

All those guys are having an amazing goddamn time right now. Those are the guys kicking it in Hawaii, partying with a celebrity in some random hotel, invincible, untouchable, leaking money. None of them had to give a shit about their behavior, because they could just throw dollars at the consequences and start it all over again. Karma’s a fucking lie. You’re either born sucking on a silver spoon, or you live in a dumpster with your suicidal dad.

That doesn’t mean you can’t homebrew karma.

“Alright,” I said with a sweetness that anyone else would have realized was predatory. “We’ll give it another shot.”

Reset. Make-up. Dialogue. 

Morphing.

As soon as thought-speak came to me, I targeted Dottie. 

<Hey, I got a favor. C’mon, don’t freak out, stay still, no one can hear me but you. Seriously, I’m going to need you to look less terrified.>

Dottie closed her eyes for a moment, breathed in, and then snapped right back into casually observing. I would have given her a thumbs up, but my mouth was lipless and my tongue was a spear, so I was a little preoccupied.

<There you go. Oscar winning performance. CAA will love you. Alright, listen. I need you to record what’s going to happen next on your palm pilot.>

She cocked her head to the side, a tiny movement you wouldn’t have noticed unless you were having a secret brain conversation with her. I got the message, even while encased in craggy bone-skin 

<Yeah, I know, I nearly fucked up your life already, and you’re not allowed to film. Did I not do right by you? C’mon. Just do it.>

Slowly, she took out her palm pilot, glaring, and held it carefully in her lap while focusing the camera lens on me.

<Great. Excellent. Keep rolling. I’ll tell you when to stop.>

I flapped away, demorphed, and realized I was just in my underwear. Thankfully, Cronenberg himself was right outside the room dividers, holding out a new pair of jeans. I muttered a thanks at him while putting them back on, unbalanced and shaking.

“He’s pissed,” Cronenberg said, voice low. He looked me up and down with genuine concern. “That one took the longest.”

“Good for him,” I muttered. I walked away, weaving. Cronenberg tried to steady me, but I shrugged him off. I indicated Dottie with my head. He glanced at her, then looked back at me with a sudden understanding.

“You’re going to leak this asshole treating you like shit, aren’t you.”

“Yep,” I said, mustering up a smirk.

“Oh shit,” whispered Cronenberg. “Everyone’s gonna love watching this fucker abuse a real ass Animorph. He’ll never live that down.”

I winked at him. 

The plan was to sell it to the highest bidder and anonymously donate the funds to a charity he’d hate. It feels real good to combine charity with pettiness.

I continued to zombie walk my way back to Teddy. I could handle myself when I felt like shit, but it didn’t take much exaggeration to act all weak and dazed. I was, I just wasn’t hiding it.

“That’s it for me,” I said, letting exhaustion leak into my voice. 

Teddy played his part admirably. He gestured toward my pants, which made him look like he was gesturing at my crotch, and wasn’t that just the icing on the cake. “Those ripped in half.”

“Did you like what you saw?” I joked.

“Don’t be disgusting,” he said.

Teddy Dreyer, indirectly, was about to make a lot of money for The Trevor Project.

I coughed weakly, channeling Nicole Kidman in _Moulin Rouge_ , a sympathetic leading lady with a wasting disease. Really, my throat was just super dry. Dangerous amounts of morphing was dehydrating, I guess. I was in new territory. “Yeah, sorry. I got a little sloppy. Never done three morphs in a row.”

He didn’t realize I was summarizing the events as if giving exposition (which I was for the future viral audience). He paced back and forth, a director at the end of his rope. “Alright. Let’s just try one more time. Faster. And nicer. Stop with this horror shit.”

Perfect.

“I told you I can’t control—”

“You’re lying. We’ve all seen Cassie can morph in 30 seconds flat. Stop saying you can’t. You’re not trying, and you know it. I’m sick of it. You’re wasting everyone’s time.”

“I can’t morph that fast. I can’t. I really can’t. The andalites have a whole word for people like Cassie, she’s different, I’m not her,” I said, pleading uncomfortably. I was giving everything I had. I could see Dottie shift out of the corner of my eye, getting a better angle.

“Try!” Teddy shouted. He turned away and waved his hand in the air. “Back to fucking one, everybody!”

We did the whole scene again. I was visibly shaking, but Teddy didn’t seem to care. Then came the morphing.

I have never, ever tried morphing four times in a row. None of us had, not without a solid two hours in morph.

I had no idea what was going to happen.

Everything immediately lost focus when I started morphing. My body felt like tar leaking down a road, thick and sticky black, rolling slowly. I suddenly felt my skin go tight in a thousand different places, little slices of numbness drawn all over my skin. I looked down and squinted, trying to sharpen my sight. I saw feather patterns. Wouldn’t that just be my luck, Teddy Dreyer getting exactly what he wanted.

I’d be more angry about it if my head didn’t feel stuffed with cotton candy, as cloudy as my vision.

The whole set was dead silent.

Then, all at once, _I felt my morph._

My lungs were too small, too small, thumbprints of muscle and tissue, and my mouth opened for a gasp of air that couldn’t come. Pain seared through the feather lines on my skin, all of it burning, a woodcutter carving patterns with laser. My bones were melting, shifting, my blood boiling acid, and I wanted to scream but there was no air, my lips pinched into brittle beak—

I demorphed as fast as I could, and as soon as my lungs were back, I was yelling uncontrollably.

There were voices and people all around me, but I couldn’t make sense of anything. 

I passed out.

Which I’ve never done sober or as a human, so that was neat!

—

I woke up in a hospital bed.

I haven’t been in a hospital bed, like, ever. I was a pretty cautious kid, in spite of Jake’s best efforts, so I never broke a bone or got a cut so deep I needed stitches. Jake sure did both those things, and I remember his whole family rushing to the emergency room, worried but laughing at his youthful follies.

My mom was dead and my dad could barely lift his head. If I had hurt myself, I would have had to bike to the hospital on my own.

Then came morphing, and even if I’ve been ripped in half and torn apart and disemboweled, hey, right as rain five minutes later.

The old bitterness tasted worse than it ever had before, consuming my thoughts so wholly, making me so angry, that I was hit with a flush of adrenaline. I sat up like a freshly released jack-in-the-box, suddenly alert and aware. Then I immediately lay back down, too dizzy to hold myself up, but I still felt red-hot energy buzzing through me.

I’d had a lot of feelings these past few days. I was on some _Roller Coaster Tycoon_ ride with impossible physics, undulating from the peak of excitement, then down to all consuming irritation, then back up again, over and over and over.

I tried sitting up again, moving much more slowly, this time respecting my physical state. My body felt like a bunch of wet noodles someone had enchanted to become a person, floppy and formless. My head pounded. All I wanted to do was lie back down and sleep, but I forced myself to keep the sandbags that had replaced my eyelids up. 

There was an IV stuck into my hand. I frowned at it, and pulled it out. Blood began to flood out of my vein, making a messy pool on the sheets. I watched it for a moment, but only because I was dazed. I had long ago lost any kind of reaction to my own blood.

There was no reason for me to be in a damn hospital, if not just because I deserved better lighting. I needed to morph and escape. What would get me out of here? Mouse? I had a mouse morph, right? I could never keep track. I hoped so. A mouse could easily scurry along the walls unseen. I could get to the front, then morph a not-me human, ask to use someone’s palm pilot, call a cab, and bam. Home. 

I focused on the mouse.

Nothing happened.

Shit. Alright. Guess I don’t have a mouse morph. Cockroach, then. I was sure I could crawl through some window crack and creep down the building. More time consuming, but whatever. It’d be fine.

I focused on the cockroach.

I still couldn’t morph.

My heart froze. I couldn’t breathe. I heard a panicked ringing in my ears, loud and consuming, a thin little scream.

Slowly, I shifted my gaze to the IV bag. It was innocently swaying back and forth, disrupted by me removing the needle. 

Someone came into the room. I jumped and swiveled my head to see them, which made me wince in pain. I could still feel the ghosts of the morph that hadn’t been numbed, the cuts on my skin, the shifting of my organs. I needed to be home and sleeping in my Tempur-Pedic California king, soothed by oxy’s warm embrace. Now.

The woman who came was staring down at a clipboard. She had claw marks on her face, and walked on a prosthetic leg. She set down her clipboard, and gave me this look I’d seen so many times before. It was the look of an ex-host who had plenty of reasons to resent me.

Shit.

“Doctor doctor, tell me the news!” I said cheerfully. My voice cracked from exhaustion, like I was in that post-hangover, pre-morph phase after waking up. Funny, how that’s my only touchstone for illness. 

Dr. Pegleg gave me a tight smile. “Looks like you pushed yourself a little too far.”

Judging by her bedside manner, she wasn’t my biggest fan. I realized I was bunching up the blanket with my fist, which flexed my bleeding arm, which caused more blood to gush out. She noticed, and frowned. She went to a cabinet and pulled out gauze, then grabbed my arm and used it to put pressure on the bleeding. She was more than a little rough. 

“Always ask a professional if you’d like an IV removed,” she said. “This only makes a mess. Are you familiar with a saline drip?”

I was. Other, non-morph capable humans would get them to cure a hangover, if they happened to have hundreds of dollars to spend on a morning after. I blinked at it blearily.

“Alright, that was probably a little dramatic of me. But here’s the thing, doc. I don’t think this is a job for human tech. They told you the whole story, right?”

“They did,” she said. “And I don’t disagree, but I’m not ready to call the andalite embassy. This is most likely simple overexertion. No need to bother them quite yet.”

She started to wrap up my bleeding hand. I fought to keep my breath under control.

“Hey, have you ever read my book? Because there’s a whole chapter devoted to the time Rachel was allergic to a morph and randomly morphed elephant in her bedroom. No one got hurt, and the insurance money paid for a lovely updated kitchen, but I don’t think that’s how it’d play out here.”

She pursed her lips at me. I searched her eyes, looking for some sign she was okay being in this room with me, that she wasn’t inwardly seething with rage.

Some people we’d disabled held nothing against the Animorphs, and even wore their war wounds proudly.

But not everyone.

She gave me a disapproving look. “I’m sure you’ve noticed my injuries.”

 _Yeah. I’d been obsessing about them since you walked in,_ I thought. 

I gasped dramatically and held my hand to my heart. “Why, no, not at all! I’m a completely evolved human being who never notices imperfections, especially not scars clearly left by tiger claws! Why do you ask?”

She wasn’t amused by my whimsy. 

“My yeerk was just some grunt,” she said. “Unambitious, unimportant. We were thrown to the front lines over and over like cattle.” She gestured to her face. “Yes, tiger.” She gestured to her leg. “Gorilla.”

“Ah,” I said, at the mercy of a woman who said ‘we’ when speaking about her yeerk instead of, you know, ‘my yeerk.’ I curled my toes under the sheet. 

She was clearly a slugfucker, a yeerk sympathizer who likely had found a new parasite to host. She had poisoned my IV drip, and that’s why I couldn’t morph.

I had never been happier to have ripped a tube out of my body. I had also never ripped a tube out of my body before.

“I am truly, truly sorry,” I said, switching from playful to earnest. “And I know Jake is, too.”

“I am happy to hop around one foot if it means my freedom. I wanted to thank you.”

She attempted this sweet, soft little voice, and it was pretty damn convincing—if you weren’t serving it to a professional liar. Wouldn’t be the first time I had a sinister battle beneath an innocuous conversation. Actors will fight to the death like that.

“Doesn’t make me any less awful that you got caught in the crossfire,” I said. “You don’t happen to have a name and address, do you? If you give them to me, I’ll send you a ‘sorry I crushed your bones’ Hallmark card. I have ‘em make them special, just for me. There’s a little poem.”

She laughed a little. Jesus, finally. If she and her little alien terrorist buddy were going to trap me in a hospital room, the least they could do was appreciate my jokes. 

There was a script to this. Most people realize that when I ask for their address, I’m about to go Oprah on them. Sometimes they give it right away, sometimes they say no, no, I mustn’t, your sacrifice was enough! I charm the information out of them anyway, then I have my assistant send them a gift basket that costs tens of thousands of dollars to put together (and it actually does come with a custom Hallmark card, which I tuck a twenty dollar bill inside). Sometimes they send me a cute little letter back, and it warms my lifeless heart for about ten seconds. Everyone has a nice time.

“There’s no need,” she said. “Just focus on resting.”

“Sure,” I said.

She grabbed the IV stand and gave me a pointed look. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but if you want to recover faster, you’ll let me put this back in.”

I waved a hand. “I’d rather just drink some Gatorade. I like that it tastes like a waterlogged Fruit Roll-Up that's been dipped in a bucket of salt.”

That got another chuckle out of her. The yeerk was remembering to play nice. “I’ll get you some.”

As soon as she left, I launched myself to the pile of clothing someone—probably my assistant—had left neatly folded on a chair, and threw them on as fast as I could. My wallet, palm pilot, and car keys were on a nearby table. Good ol’ Number One Eight-Point-Oh. I opened up my palm pilot, loaded up the car tracking app, and booked it out of the hospital. When a nurse stopped me, I told her I was going to see the andalite embassy. She didn’t question it, and told me she was a big fan.

I followed the app to the parking garage, and used the wall for balance more than once. Shit. The yeerk had been right, I was pretty messed up. I needed goldfish crackers and a nap mat. 

While using my palm pilot to locate my car, I saw a bunch of pigeons hanging out, waiting for some kid to drop their cheerios.

I watched them, frozen, looking for a pigeon with three stripes.

One of them looked right at me.

“Fuck you,” I said, my hands clutched so tightly around my keys that my fist hurt. “Fuck. You.”

I saw a man walk by and give me a weird look. I grinned. “Just me and Cassie, messing around.”

“What?” he asked.

I walked away on my shaking legs, stumbling into cars now and then.

—

When I got to the car, I slid in, closed the door, and dialed a number on my palm pilot.

“Hey,” I said, pressing it to my ear while I opened my glove compartment. “Can I get a cab sent to Cedars-Sinai as fast as possible?”

I took out a small black box. It was completely sealed, not a soldering seam in sight. I also pulled out a few Kudos bars because, you know. Nutrition. I set it aside and held it in my hand. I pressed my thumb against it.

“Great. Great. Great, great, great. Seriously, fast. Tell ‘em I tip well. Like, hey honey, we’re going to the Bahamas well. I mean it. Fast.”

The box popped open, revealing a dark black device, clunky and ugly. One of the older models, but oh well.

One can’t be choosy when buying Dracon beams off the black market.

I pocketed the very deadly space gun and got out of my car. “You're the best,” I said to the taxi dispatcher. I hung up and slammed my car door shut.

I unwrapped a Kudos bar, held it in my fist, and bit off half of it while power walking to the hospital entrance.

—

By the time I found my way through to the front entrance, a sleek black Town Car was already waiting for me. Oh, do you think I called Yellow Blue? God no, I’m very rich and important. 

I all but fell in, which made me feel like a fainting young maiden who was wasting away in her papa’s manor. My body was saying, “Hey Marco? Do you remember lying down? I really need that for us right now, buddy.” I agreed. _Soon_ , I thought to my body. _Soon we will be tucked away in the home theater in the sub-basement, surrounded by plush chairs, good movies, canned goods, water filters, and generators._

What, you’re surprised I have an underground bunker? C’mon. I’m not stupid. I’m no Cassie when it comes to assassination attempts, but I’ve had my fair share. So, yeah, I had a bunker. A few of them, each drowning in illegal yeerk tech. A guy’s gotta have a hobby.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

I gave him my address, then settled in for a silent, peaceful ride.

I leaned back to relax, but I fought against the urge to close my eyes. There would be no resting of my ever-shifting bones until I was safe. Sure, I was in a moving car, but morph-capable ex-hosts were after me. I couldn’t sleep knowing that. There could be a flea on me as we speak, but I wasn’t too bothered. My one time enemy the Gleek Bio-Filter was now a dear friend. Good luck, asshole.

Staying awake was easier said than done. I felt like every individual organ had been replaced with a children’s sand sculpture, upside-down buckets and crabs, drying out, cracking, crumbling. I wasn’t breathing right. Everything felt wrong.

A thought came to me, and I clutched the door handle in panic.

Maybe I couldn’t morph because I hadn’t reversed back to human all the way. Maybe I had a bird-heart, overworked to the point of breaking, poised to shatter at the slightest strain. 

No. No, couldn’t be, no. Had to be something in the IV drip. Had to be poison.

Maybe I should go back to the hospital. I could buy a new heart. I could throw enough money around to put myself at the top of the donation list, climbing over fathers and mothers and children who never had a chance in the first place.

I’m sure it was the poison. Demorphing had become a reflex, like flinching or blinking. Just another protective measure my body did without me thinking about it.

My heartbeat was so fast, too fast, impossibly fast.

Then I heard it.

_Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,_

_And I'm wondering what it is I should do,_

_It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,_

_Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,_

_Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,_

_Here I am, stuck in the middle with you_

Have you ever seen _Reservoir Dogs_? If you haven’t, you should. There’s this scene where Michael Madsen is torturing the police officer character, and he ends up cutting off his ear while dancing to _Stuck In The Middle With You_ , a song by some 70s one-hit wonder nobodies that were never heard of again. Pretty cool.

I’d ripped off ears plenty of times in the war. I mean, it sent a cheeky little message. You make your own fun when you’re fighting for your life.

Dr. Pegleg, now this? I couldn’t see the driver, but I’m sure he had some kind of injury, some kind of scar. So many ex-hosts did, and they all knew whose fault it was. 

These people had managed to intercept the original driver, and sent in their own replacement.

This guy had no plans on taking me home.

“Hey, can you pull over?” I said, all casual, as if nothing was wrong.

He did, I got out of the car, and I ran.

—

“Jake,” I whispered into my phone.

I was crouched behind a city-planned copse, located next to stairs that led from the freeway to a walkway. It wasn’t the best hiding place, but it’d do for now.

“Pick up your phone, man,” I said. They were definitely bugging my phone, sure, but if they were after me, they were after us all. If I could get to Jake before they could, great.

Thing is, Jake wasn’t picking up, and I couldn’t assume that was because they had gotten to him first. He was probably lying face down in his bed, surrounded by scattered potato chips like his bedroom was a murder scene and his blood was made of gas station snacks.

“This is a big operation, man. Come on. I need you to answer me. Pick up the phone, Jake. Pick up the pho—”

The line cut out. End of message. I sighed, and called him again.

_Ring. Ring. Ring._

“This mailbox is full, and cannot accept any messages at this time. Goodbye!”

I couldn’t help it. I yelled out in frustration. If his mailbox was full after seven messages, that meant he already had thirteen he hadn’t listened to. Most of those were probably me. Love you too, Jake.

I saw something scurry in the bushes.

I threw my phone down and stepped on it, grinding it into the ground with a twist of my ankle, just like Olivia Newton John in _Grease_ when she sings to John Travolta about how she’s a newer, sexier, hornier woman.

“You better shape up!” I sang at the bushes, channeling my inner Olivia, walking backwards and pointing at them over and over. “’Cause I need a man! And my heart is set on you!”

I was on to them, and they knew it. I winked and bounced up the stairs, arriving at a residential street.

—

I hopped into the nearest convenience store I could find, some too-bright family- owned place with dirt on the ground and orange stickers on the merchandise. I didn’t really care if they bleached regularly or not. I just needed mosquito repellent.

I made my purchase, accompanied by a Monster, because Jesus, I was so tired. I took out some cash, just in case.

I kept my head down while navigating past all the gas pumps and I found a hidden place behind a dumpster. I slammed the Monster, and then drained the entire can of OFF! onto my skin, making sure I sprayed it over every inch of my body. I threw the rest of my wallet in the dumpster.

I could feel the chemicals in my nose and my throat, and every time I moved I breathed in more. I couldn’t stop coughing. My skin was sticky with poison. I didn’t care. I was a human bug bomb, and no one could land on me and survive.

— 

I wandered around for a while, trying to stay close to commercial areas. If they tried something, I wanted people around to see. I wanted palm pilots out and recording. I wanted their faces in a database.

While trying to form a plan, I saw a bunch of construction tape around an open manhole. I looked around to see if anyone was close enough to recognize me, and I dipped under the impenetrable barrier and peered into the hole.

I saw a big, roomy tunnel.

Perfect.

Most of the time, the sewers aren’t like they are in the movies. I should know, I’ve been in them, wearing my best eel evening gown. But a big, historic city like Los Angeles? Oh, they’ve got all the classic, cavernous sewers, fit for the Ninja Turtles themselves.

It was an enclosed space, but with only one entrance. No bug could get near me right now, so if a bird or squirrel or other such neighborhood creature wanted to follow me? I’d see ‘em come down the hole. 

I climbed down the ladder, and started moving immediately. There was the possibility they would demorph, remorph, and come find me. I had to lose them.

—

I didn’t have a flashlight, and as it turns out, they don’t outfit underground tunnels with street lamps. I wandered around with no plan and no idea where I was going, and I couldn’t morph anything that _could_ see down here. But they couldn’t get me down here. They wouldn’t be able to find me. I’d been moving too fast.

But I was exhausted.

I slipped, twice, getting brackish water and shit all over me, and once I was almost swept away with the current. I lost the Dracon beam, my only means of defense. I had to sit down on the curve of the tunnel every twenty minutes or so to regain what little strength I had. The sewers were dangerous enough, but I felt close to passing out again, and there was no one around to give me attention for it.

Except for all the water. Which, you know, probably a bad place to collapse. Imagine the headlines: _The Body of Marco, Teen Savior Of The Planet, Was Found In A Sewer For Some Reason_. Maybe that was their long game. Maybe they had left the manhole open. Maybe this was part of their plan.

I had to get out, but I couldn’t get out the way I’d gotten in. They’d be waiting for me there. I had to find another exit.

I wandered around for what felt like hours, pushing forward on anxious adrenaline alone.

I tried morphing a few times. Back in the hospital, I felt nothing. Now, I was feeling a sort of tingling, like I was moving a limb that had been asleep. Their poison was wearing off. Good.

Eventually, I saw light and followed the opening. I crawled through a pipe, barely fitting through it. I emerged somewhere completely unknown to me. 

Go forward, go forward.

They’re still out there.

—

I had no idea how late it was, but I’m pretty sure the hours were getting real small. I saw no one around other than a few cars driving by. Thankfully, none of them paid me any attention. I was wet and stumbling on weak legs at whatever-o’clock in the morning, and I didn’t want a single person looking at me too hard.

If these yeerk terrorists led me to ruining my reputation, I would be so mad.

Hell, I was already mad. I could feel my rage as heat in the hollows of my ears. Fuck these guys. Fuck these guys, fuck the yeerks, fuck L.A, and fuck all of humanity for flushing toilets because I could smell myself, and it wasn’t pretty. Could be worse. Could be Old Spice.

My anger pushed me forward. Keep moving. Keep running. They’re going to find you. You need to hide.

My rage gave way to all-consuming fear.

I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t safe.

A Carl’s Jr. appeared like a bright yellow celestial vision. I still had cash on me, though it was utterly soaked in shit water. It would have to do.

I needed food. I needed a Coke. I needed to sit down. I needed to sleep. I needed to be tucked away somewhere sealed. I needed my morphing back. I needed to not be me, so I wouldn’t have these problems at all.

Fuck yeerks.

Fuck them.

I stumbled up to the counter, and had to grab on to it to maintain my balance. The cashier gave me an openly disgusted look, like I was subhuman, like I wouldn’t notice. Remind me to build a recovery-focused homeless shelter one day. I could do it if the yeerks didn’t kill me first.

They were still out there. They were coming for me.

Focus. Act normal. Get a burger. Maybe that will help you morph.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Speaking was painful, my voice sticking to the dry walls of my throat.

“Know what?”

“What I look like. Friend pushed me into a pool. It’s—” I stopped and sighed. I was exhausted, but my mind was going a mile a minute. My vision was tunneling. I needed rest, I needed, I needed.

He squinted at me. “You look a lot like that Animorph guy.”

“Gee, thank you so much, I love it when random people tell me I look like another Mexican. We’re all the same, aren’t we!”

“I didn’t—”

“My money’s wet, but it works,” I said, and presented a sopping twenty.

He took it by the corner. I rolled my eyes.

“I didn’t piss on it,” I snapped.

“You sure?”

“Just give me a #5. No bun.”

“L.A. style?” he asked, blinking.

My head snapped up, and I focused my gaze on him. “What?”

“L.A. style. No bun. Just double checking.”

“Most people call it protein style.”

He shrugged.

Code word. Had to have stumbled on a code word. Happy meal with extra happy? #5 with no bun. L.A. style was the answer. Had to be.

They hadn’t found me. I’d found them. I walked right into their web.

“Fuck off,” I said.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

I got out. Had to get out.

The more I walked, the more I started to lose focus on my surroundings, my consciousness going in and out.

—

I was in some diner. I was trying to sit at the bar. They wouldn’t serve me. I thought about pointing out I was Marco, and it wasn’t my fault I was having a bad day. Then I looked closer at their decorations. There was a Sharing poster. I think it was a Sharing poster.

I left.

—

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you!” I yelled at a man. I had stumbled on his lawn, and he had come out to threaten me. He was holding his palm pilot in his hand. He was going to call the cops.

The yeerks had taken over the police department years ago. One of the first things they did. Smart slugs.

I flipped him off and stumbled away.

—

I fell on the ground. I got up. Had to hide. Had to hide. Cops were coming, the cops were yeerks, everyone else was gone, Rachel was dead, I had no backup.

—

There were lights. Bright lights. Flood lights. Was I on-set? Where was I?

Motion lights. Backyard motion lights. I’d set them off. I couldn’t be seen here.

A pool. I could hide in the pool. I could morph. But morphing was—

I jumped in, held my breath.

Lobster. Lobster could handle the chlorine. Probably.

My skin became shell.

—

I was small and red with human fingers and then—

Oh.

Well hello there, lucidity. 

I hate what you’ve done with the place.

— 

I’ve morphed off booze and drugs before. Just like with my body, it never goes the same way twice. Sometimes it’s slow and comforting, like someone covering me with a blanket of sense. Sometimes it’s almost opposite, and I feel my inebriation sluice away in a cascade. Sometimes it flakes off in pieces, each glorious shitfaced symptom popping out of existence in a line: first euphoria, then bravery, then the feeling that everything was okay.

This?

This disappeared in a burst, a slap of reality stinging against my cheek, and all at once I realized there was no one chasing me. I was just some lobster in someone’s backyard inground pool. Someone was eventually going to come out to see my clothes floating in the water. Thankfully, Paranoia Episode Me had tossed my wallet. What a guy.

Dr. Whatsit hadn’t spiked my IV drip with some kind of Animorph kryptonite. Good guess, Marco, but it was probably because you’re an asshole who had tried to catch someone else in the act of being an asshole to prove a point. I had no business morphing four times in a row but hey, at least I discovered this unknown consequence! Another thing to tell an andalite and watch their tail twitch with disbelief. You should have seen them try to figure out my whole combo-morphing thing. 

I’m a pioneer. 

Lobsters aren’t exactly sun creatures, so I couldn’t see shit until the lights turned off. I crawled into a corner and waited. I didn’t know if I just had the one morph in me or not, and I didn’t want to push it by immediately morphing back.

I wish I could say this was the first time I completely and totally went off the deep end. This time it was extra fun, because I actually ended up in a pool’s deep end!

—

I gave into the lobster mind, nothing but primal instincts of hunger and survival. The real kind, the simple kind, the need to find food and not be food. Not Hollywood hunger, a desperate chase of the public’s love. When you had it, you could keep drinking and fucking, shielded from meaningful consequences. All it took was letting people with more power take advantage of you while you tried to maintain a front of dignity.

Fuck Hollywood.

—

I watched a lot of movies as a kid. Mom was a movie person. She especially liked old ones, movies from before her time, when everyone talked fast in gowns and sport coats, cigarettes in hand. Musicals were her favorite. Have you ever seen _Singin’ In The Rain_? It’s stupid. There’s no real plot, it’s just a string of random songs. 

Have you ever seen your mom dance in the kitchen while belting Wouldn’t It Be Loverly in the most obnoxious cockney accent possible?

It’s beautiful.

Before she raised a kid, she worked in public relations, commuting to L.A. and back. She took time off to raise me. She wanted to go back to work when I started school, but dad didn’t think it’d be good for me. They fought about it all the time, until they stopped fighting at all.

Mom doesn’t sing anymore.

—

The last time I talked to Mom—really talked—I was in my bunker, and I wouldn’t get out.

I thought I had gotten this PTSD bullshit under control.

Guess not.

—

People think I love my career, that I’m busy and thriving, that it’s all frivolous parties and hot humans hanging off my arm.

Mom warned me what happened to little boys who stop hearing the word ‘no.’ I told her I was smarter than that, better than that. That I had her. We had each other.

Turns out, she’s as addicted to her job as I am. She’s got her ex-host activism. She left me alone with all the champagne.

But I had to become this guy. The funny guy. The cool guy. The Hollywood guy.

Things were terrifyingly tense at the end of the war. The whole damn planet was reeling from the existence of aliens, never mind aliens that could be anyone or anywhere. Some people got all convinced their loved ones were yeerks out to get them, even if they lived in some nowhere town so unimportant the yeerks wouldn’thave bothered going there, even if they actually _had_ conquered the planet. I guess some people have paranoid tendencies exasperated by times of high stress.

Not that I would know.

Then you add the andalites messing with our politics, the push back on ex-hosts asking for protection, certain media outlets thinking, “You know what would be fun? Giving credence to conspiracy theories and really riling everything up,” and you have a recipe for global disaster. Crime went up. Suicides went up. There were shootings. Riots.

Insert the Avengers. Cassie, taking care of the politics. Ax, leaving the planet as soon as he could. Tobias, shitting on squirrels somewhere. Jake, doing nothing.

Someone needed to do something.

Earth needed an animorph to calm the masses. They needed someone to say hey, it’s alright let’s all calm down now. That person needed to be wholesome, Danny Tanner-lite, never without a joke and never without a smile.

I made the yeerks funny. I made the animorphs relatable. I made the war not that big of a deal.

I made a lot of money. 

My mom was right about little boys who stop hearing the word ‘no.’

—

I’ve done the whole therapy thing. I’ve waltzed into an office owned by someone paid way too much to listen to rich people whine about how hard it is to never work for anything.

Not me. I was there to talk about my many eviscerations.

No one could figure out how to deal with that. The thing about telling everyone how many times you’ve been stabbed by aliens is that they can’t really keep their cool. I see their shock, their horror, their pity. 

I’m tired of therapists. I’m tired of magic brain pills that don’t work. I’m tired of being one of five remaining people who understand what I went through, and the other four having no interest in me. Cassie did, for a minute, but she started to use me for her politics just like everyone else.

I should go home and lock myself in the bunker. I’m not as important as I used to be, anyway. I’m just Nick Lang now, regular TV show star.

Sometimes I think about slipping up. Making a mess. Mooning all of America. 

But I can’t, because I’m Marco, and I don’t belong to me.

I’ll drink to that.

— 

I began to demorph. It felt pretty normal. No prickling skin. No pain.

In time, I was some boy in a stranger’s pool, wearing nothing, lying face down with my eyes wide open and staring at the bottom of the pool.

I wondered what the tabloids would say about me tomorrow?

I’d have to retrace my steps, see who told who what, hope that no one one recognized me. Rumors were kind of acceptable. Proof wasn’t.

My lungs started burning, so I turned around in the water, and stared up at the sky. It was turning a light blue as God or the Ellimist or Alanis Morissette or whoever the hell was in charge up there slowly turned up a cosmic dimmer switch. Another beautiful L.A. sunrise. Another perfect 70 degree day.

Sunny southern California.

I reached into my brain, found the osprey. What a guy, that osprey. Could fly even wet, which was great when I was avoiding being seen.

Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

I flew home.

Roll credits.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for psychosis, paranoia, and delusions.


End file.
